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Shortly before Marie-Chantal
Miller met Pavlos, Crown Prince
of Greece, on a blind date in 1992,
the young duty-free heiress and recent New York
Academy of Art student had moved back home
with her parents to a majestic 1913 town house near
the Frick that the Millers had just finished trans-
forming with the legendary Italian decorator Renzo
Mongiardino. Rich bordeaux and emerald velvets
draped the walls, and heavy wood furniture cast an
imposing air. One of the rooms was lit by candles
alone. “We called it the dark ages because there was
no light,” says the blonde beauty today, leading the
way into the domed foyer. When Marie-Chantal—
now a mother of five and the eponymous founder
of a childrenswear brand—and Pavlos, who married
in 1995, decided to relocate their family from an
18th-century mansion in London several years ago,
the couple didn’t need to embark on a real-estate
hunt. “The house was empty, so we moved in.”
Still, the place was brooding and theatrical and
didn’t suit her young family. She wanted to “freshen
it up.” To do so, she called on another legendary
decorator, one she’d known from childhood: François
Catroux. The French designer to nobles and billion-
aires from Guy and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild to
David Geffen had worked with her parents over the
years and had collaborated with Marie-Chantal and
Pavlos on their London place. “I met him when I
was eight,” she says. “Catroux had so much flair and
elegance, and he was absolutely gorgeous. I remember
him driving down our little street in Paris in a Bentley
convertible, with lots of hair.” Over the decades, she
says, “we’ve become great friends. Nowadays with
decorators you have schedules, timelines, retainer fees,
and with him it wasn’t like that. It was a nice, gentle
way of putting a house together.” She adds, “He has a
specific style, which I’ve always liked—not too fussy,
rich, or overwhelming.”THE HOUSE’S STONEWORK, moldings, and paneling
were all preserved, but out went the gilded leather
wall coverings, heavy curtains, and red velvet sofas
trimmed in passementerie, all dismantled meticu-
lously and placed in storage for some future day.
White, gray, and taupe hues now canvas nearly every
wall. “We wanted to start with a clean slate and see
the rooms for what they were, then decide what kind
of furniture could sit nicely in them,” Marie-Chantal
explains. “A lot of Mongiardino fans are going to be
very upset. My mother was always experimenting
with design, so I had lots of patterns in my life. I just
wanted to deal with easy neutrals.”